Tuesday, 3 March 2015

Exclusion and Embrace: Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness and Reconciliation,
Miroslav Volf, Abingdon Press, 1996, page 54

Warning of the need for the ecumenical community to struggle against "new tribalism", Volf comments that:

In situations of conflict Christians often find themselves accomplces in war, rather than agents of peace. We find it difficult to distance ourselves from our selves and our own culture and so we echo its reigning opinions and mimic its practices.

Surely, he is right there! He goes on:

As we keep the vison of G-d's future alive, we need to reach out across the firing lines and join hands with our brothers and sisters on the other side. We need to let them pull us out of the enclosure of our own culture and its own particular set of prejudices so that we can read afresh the "one word of G-d." In this way we might become again the salt to the world ridden by strife.